1645016 - [Experiment] [Intermittent] The "Set Firefox to Default" snippet is wrongly displayed on the first opened tab after the "Set Firefox as Default" or the "Dismiss" buttons are clicked

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: Messaging System, defect, P1)

Description

[Marius Coman [:mcoman], Ecosystem QA]

Attachment: rec of the issue.gif

[Notes]:

• This issue seems to be intermittent since I have managed to reproduce it only on 3 Firefox profiles from a total of 5.

[Affected versions]:

• Firefox Release 72.0 - Build ID: 20200103162918
• Firefox Release 73.0.1 - Build ID: 20200217142647
• Firefox Release 74.0 - Build ID: 20200309095159
• Firefox Release 75.0 - Build ID: 20200403170909
• Firefox Release 76.0 - Build ID: 20200429185419
• Firefox Release 77.0.1 - Build ID: 20200602222727

[Affected Platforms]:

• Windows 10 x64
• macOS 10.15
• Ubuntu 18.04 x64

[Prerequisites]:

• Have a Firefox en-US locale build installed.
• Have a Firefox profile older than 17 weeks. In order to do that you can change the creation date from the "times.json" file that can be found in the current profile folder.
• Have the following pref in the "about:config" page:
  • "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.asrouter.providers.snippets" pref value set to "{"id":"snippets","enabled":true,"type":"remote","url":"https://snippets.cdn.mozilla.net/%STARTPAGE_VERSION%/%NAME%/%VERSION%/%APPBUILDID%/%BUILD_TARGET%/%LOCALE%/%CHANNEL%/%OS_VERSION%/experiment-202007-hvmt/%DISTRIBUTION_VERSION%/","updateCycleInMs":14400000}".
  • "browser.search.region" pref value must not be set to "US".

[Steps to reproduce]:

1. Open the browser with the profile from prerequisites.
2. Open a new tab and click the "Set Firefox as Default" button from the snippet displayed under the in-content search bar.
3. Open a new tab and observe the displayed sections .

[Expected result]:

• The following sections are displayed:
  • "In-content Search Bar"
  • "Top Sites"
  • "Recommended by Pocket" (if available)
  • "Highlights"

[Actual result]:

• The "Set Firefox to Default" snippet is still displayed under the in-content "Search Bar".

[Notes]:

• The impression ping is also displayed in the "Browser Console" when the snippet is displayed for the second time.
• This might be a preloading issue considering the fact that the snippet is displayed only on the first opened tab and the "Set Firefox to Default" snippets are blocked in the "about:newtab#devtools" page right after the "Set Firefox as Default" button is clicked.
• This issue is also reproducible is the snippet is removed from the "Dismiss" button.
• Attached a screen recording of the issue.

Comment 1

[Marius Coman [:mcoman], Ecosystem QA]

After further investigation, we observed that this issue is also reproducible if the snippet is removed from the "Dismiss" button. Considering this I am changing the issue's title to reflect this.

Comment 2

[Tony Cinotto [:tcinotto] (UTC-8)]

Hi Giorgos can you help us look into this issue? I consider this a blocker for the experiment as we won't be respecting our user's wishes.

Comment 3

[Giorgos Logiotatidis [:giorgos]]

This is indeed not handled correctly.

Dismissing (i.e. blocking) a snippet or never displaying again after user takes action is something that's handled by Message Router and not by Snippets.

I defer to Andrei for more information.

Bug 1645370 seems related

Comment 4

[Andrei Oprea [:andreio]]

Attachment: Bug 1645016 - Clear preloaded about:newtab from blocked snippets

Comment 5

[Dave Hunt [:davehunt] [he/him] ⌚BST]

:andreio are you working on this, or should the priority/severity be revised?

Comment 6

[Andrei Oprea [:andreio]]

This ended up not getting fixed because it was an experiment in release and we couldn't change much there.
I'll update the patch and get it reviewed.

Comment 7

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/2d3ba442aee4
Clear preloaded about:newtab from blocked snippets r=k88hudson

Comment 8

[Bogdan Tara[:bogdan_tara | bogdant]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/2d3ba442aee4

Comment 9

[Marius Coman [:mcoman], Ecosystem QA]

This issue was related to a past experiment that is no longer live. Considering this I am marking the issue as Verified.